


The Pyre of Us

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:04:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3470330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin tries to find his way in Australia. Nagisa tries to find his way in a new junior high school.</p><p>They both try not to crash and burn.</p><p>(Written for Free! Rarepairs Week 2015)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pyre of Us

**I. kindling**

 

When Rin is in Australia, there are only two people who write to him. The first is his best friend. The second is the bane of his life. 

 

_Rin-chan!! I hope you get this letter! You never left us your address so I looked up Matsuoka in the register of names and then I thought about going to visit your sister and asking for your address but then I looked up how to get to your house and it was so far away and I_

 

That’s not the end of the sentence.

It goes on.

It goes on, much to Rin’s utter bewilderment. 

It hurtles forward for an entire five more lines before Nagisa finally seems to remember that commas exist (he’s not quite graduated to full stops yet - one day, perhaps - one day even Nagisa might discover the wonders of ending a sentence properly, thinks Rin, with an optimism that seems faintly laughable even to him).

He has to squint to reassure himself that said comma is not just a squashed bug on the page.

Nagisa writes about school. He writes about Haru's dog Makkou. He writes about learning the butterfly. He writes about his new relay team. He writes about candy. He writes about making friends with the candy store owner. He writes about train rides.

Rin reads it all, and he can’t help reading it in Nagisa’s voice. He hears it in his head like the clear, bright peal of a bell. The abysmal lack of punctuation means he’s always running out of breath, which is irritating. The more Rin goes on, the more he feels this letter is like a rollercoaster ride he didn’t sign up for, and on top of that, one that _most_ probably has a questionable safety record.

But right at the end of the rails, right where the steepest drop should be -

 

_when are you coming back, rin-chan?_

 

The ride slows down.

It shudders into quiet, and a faint hush. 

 

_we miss you ^^_

 

All the words in these lines are smudged. They are written in a mess, ink splotches and crossed-out characters scattered round the blank spaces of the paper. 

 

_from: nagisa_

 

Even his name is sloppily scrawled, in the hand of an elementary schooler blowing a wish into the wind from the heart of his small pink palm. 

 _you dumbass,_ thinks Rin. _why do you say it like that? why do you say it so plainly? put it out there, in the open?_

_why?_

_how?_

 

* * *

 

Nagisa’s new school is huge.

But it’s not the kind of huge where there’s a wide open horizon filled with light, where you feel like you could run to the sun with your arms open and your heart full, breathing in all the air that gives life; it’s the kind of huge that’s silent and endless and grey as far as the eye can see. People walk through the courtyard with heads bowed, in black and white uniforms, speaking in low voices.

Nagisa clutches the piece of paper in his hand with his schedule and homeroom number written on the top. His palms are sweating. He’s going to leave sweat stains on this pristine white sheet. He’s going to have sweat stains in the armpits of his school uniform. It is really so awfully _uncool_ and Nagisa is sure he is going to mess something up. 

He looks down at his newly shined shoes, and scuffs a toe on the floor. There. It looks more natural with a bit of a scratch on the surface. 

_okay. okay okay - let's do this -_

He takes a step forward, then another, pushing his small, insignificant way through the tide that washes against him.

_the world is so big_

Nagisa is so alone. He feels a shiver run through his body, and chalks it up to the early springtime chill. These long, neverending corridors seem to channel the wind so it blows right through him, through his small, frail frame that's suddenly shaking.

Like the last leaf on a tree, ready to fall.

Nagisa's footsteps come to a slow stop. He looks up at the **1-B**  on top of his new classroom, takes a deep breath, plasters a smile on his face, and opens the door.

 

 

**II. sparks**

 

Rin is in bed with a fever. 

Rin is in bed with something he caught from someone at school, and he is burning up and gripping the sheets with red hands and pale knuckles, and if he had the voice to do so he'd let out a low growl of frustration because he is in bed and not in the pool and he is missing practice and he has so far to go, so far to catch up to everyone else. 

Rin is in bed with a fever, and there's hot salty liquid on his cheek. He becomes conscious of it with a clouded dispassion. He doesn't know if it's tears or sweat. 

There's a soft knock at his door. It opens an inch, and Rin catches a glimpse of blonde hair and golden brown eyes peeping round the edge of the doorframe.

"Hi, Lori," he croaks out. 

His voice is breaking. He pretends, for now, that it’s just the sore throat and his ravaged tonsils.

"Oh Rin, you’re awake… how're you feeling?"

Lori crosses over to him, setting a tray of chicken soup down on his bedside table and laying a hand on his forehead as she perches on the edge of his bed.

With an effort, Rin drags himself into an upright position and tries to smile at her, because no matter what, no matter how shitty he’s feeling inside, he has to keep it together in front of Lori and Russell. “Much better.”

Lori clicks her tongue at him, a frown wrinkling her brow. “You still feel really warm.”

“I’ll get better by tomorrow,” says Rin. He keeps his voice light as best he can, scrabbles desperately in the clouded haze of his mind for something that’ll bring some levity back to his smile, and somehow lands on an image of Nagisa swimming the _grasshopper_ , which makes a helpless laugh start to bubble up from somewhere in his belly and he has to swallow it with an effort, hand wandering under the covers to clutch and twist at the hem of his shirt -

“Tomorrow? Are you sure?” asks Lori, eyeing him in disbelief.

Rin’s guessing the constipated feeling shows on his face.

_dammit, nagisa, how do you mess with me even when you’re thousands of miles away_

“I’m sure!” he says, as his voice does that thing again that makes him sound like he’s spitting up a hairball. “I’ll be well enough for practice tomorrow. I have to go, Lori. I can’t miss another day.”

Lori gives him a sympathetic, relenting smile, but her tone’s firm. “Only if your temperature goes down. And you drink all your soup.”

Rin nods eagerly. Lori always puts lots of carrots and celery in the soup, and Rin hates celery, but he’ll eat every last stalk of it if it means he gets to go to practice tomorrow, because he has so far, so far to go and the others are leaving

leaving…

_leaving me_

_behind_

“Oh! This came for you.”

Lori passes a letter to Rin. There’s a knowing look on her face, and Rin doesn’t know how, but he knows Lori knows that somewhere along the way he’d stopped opening them, and there are a lot of _know_ s in that muddled sentence that just passed through the mush that is his brain, for someone who, more and more, every day, feels like he just doesn’t _know_ anything any more.

“Thanks,” says Rin, trying to keep the inevitable listlessness out of his voice. He steels himself for that sinking feeling in his stomach, when he catches sight of Sousuke’s thick, blocky script spelling out _Matsuoka Rin_ on the front of the envelope -

Except this time, it doesn’t come.

All the breath comes whooshing out of Rin in a hurry as he lets go, lets go, feels his fingers go limp.

The writing on the envelope is whirly and loopy, and there is a sticker of a penguin in the corner, and the English letters are scrawled out with a determined precision that still somehow conveys utter childlikeness in how carefully they are written, like the person really, really wanted to make sure this letter got to _Rin Matsuoka_ instead of _Ron Watsovski_ this time round.

Rin can hear Lori’s footsteps pause in the doorway for the briefest of seconds as he tears the envelope open, and the sound of paper rustling fills the room.

 

* * *

 

_Solve for x:   x² + 12  =  8x_

Junior high school is not what Nagisa had anticipated, and he can’t help but feel a little hard done by, just a little.

He’s supposed to be in the _springtime_ of his life. He is young and he’s a teenager and there should be club activities every day, and field trips to the parks and the zoo, and he should be out there swimming, and making new friends -

_friends_

and it’s there that Nagisa’s thoughts always come to an emptiness and a pause, like a skipped pebble thrown from the edge of the shore, into the wide open ocean.

_hop skip jump_

He lands lightly on his feet, like that pebble. He skims the surface and leaves little ripples behind him. Then he runs out of momentum and sinks forever beneath the dark surface.

Forever, irretrievable.

The classroom is pin-drop silent but for the ticking of the clock, and the breathing of his classmates around him. No one even taps their fingers on the table in a restless tattoo. No one even sniffs or coughs. There is a mighty tickling in Nagisa’s throat, and there is a sheet of quadratic equations in front of him, waiting to be solved. He sits by the window, twirling his pencil in his hand.

“You have fifteen more minutes, class,” says their teacher onerously from his desk at the front of the room, to a hush of acknowledgement. In the wake of the shattered silence, Nagisa hears the rustle of paper and the scrape of chairs on the ground. He seizes the chance to let his cough out.

 _x² - 8x + 12  =  0_  
_(x-2)(x-6) = 0  
_ _x=2, 6_

It’s not that Nagisa can’t do the math. Yeah okay, it’s his worst subject, and he’s pretty awful at it, but if he pushes himself hard enough he _can_ force something out, he can make himself solve for x, with enough effort…

He just doesn’t understand why he has to try so hard sometimes, or why puzzling out this new place and finding his way forward is like solving for the elusive x, why, when you find x in one question, it so coyly vanishes and you’re confronted with a new _solve for x_ right on the very next line.

_Solve for x: 4 + 11/3x − 5x²  =  0_

With fractions, no less. x is a thing that seems to exist only in fragments, bits and pieces of washed-up debris.

Nagisa finds his gaze wandering out of the window again, wishing he were anywhere but here, wishing he were in Iwatobi Junior High with Makoto and Haru…

They’re close. Too close.

He could never tell them the trouble he’s going through here. They’d worry about him, Makoto fretting openly, Haru brooding in the water. They’d get on a train to see him and Nagisa is afraid of what he will do then. He wants to think he’ll smile for them, for Mako-chan and Haru-chan, always, always, there has to be sunshine and hugs, but he is so scared he will break down and tell them all he wants to do is swim with them again and let his quadratic equations fly away into the wind.

But Rin...

 _5x² - 11/3x - 4  =  0  
_ _15x² - 11x - 12 = 0_

Rin is far away. Rin isn’t here.

Rin is alone too, fighting for survival in a strange place where they don’t even speak Japanese. Rin is even more alone than Nagisa is, and yet, Nagisa is sure he is burning bright, brighter and brighter every day, because that’s Rin-chan and that’s what he does, he lives life like a comet in the night sky and he lights up everything around him.

Sometimes, when Nagisa feels lost in the grey hallways of school, or when he’s trudging to cram school ( _cram school!_ really!) after hours, he asks himself _what would rin-chan do?_ , and then he goes out and tries to do it. He pretends that he is strong and brave, and he has nothing to fear, nothing to lose.

He marches up to people with a grin on his face, and he solves for x, not by forcing himself to or by sieving the numbers through careful formulae, but by blazing down everything in his way. 

 _(3x - 4)(5x + 3) = 0  
_ _x = 4/3, -3/5_

Rin has always been good at math.

 

* * *

 

 _fuck_ , thinks Rin, hazily aware through his breathless panting that that's the kind of language nice young boys aren't supposed to use, and feeling a rush of blood to his head. 

He hoists himself out of the water, and his wrist slips the first time. He watches everyone else climb out of the pool ahead of him, walking towards the benches where their coach stands.

"Fuck," he murmurs out loud, experimentally, in his new low gravelly voice that squeaks a little high at the end still, and decides he likes the sound of the word. 

There’s nothing for it. He came in second to last, and even though it’s just training, and they’re all friendly here, Rin has to face up to the fact that maybe he’s just a shitty swimmer, maybe he was good in Iwatobi, but _fuck fuck fuckity fuck_ Iwatobi is nothing but a pimple on Sydney’s ass, and Sydney itself is nothing but a spot on the face of the rest of the world -

_the world is so big._

Rin joins the rest of his team, listens dully to something the coach says about his butterfly form and how his shoulders are stiff and he needs to watch his feet while kicking, and contemplates the bitter, ironic hilarity of the fact that, not so long ago, _he_ was the one trying to teach someone how to swim butterfly.

 _nagisa, i’m sorry  
_ _i’m sorry_

Later, as Rin clutches on to a handhold on a crowded train and grits his teeth, the words in Nagisa’s letter run cruelly through his head again.

 

_Rin-chan, my new school is so full of smart people. I think you would have done so wonderfully here! I’m not clever like you so it’s hard for me sometimes,_

 

Rin hears the low hum of conversation all around him, words in English spoken with a thick accent that he’s just beginning to get the hang of. Every day, he thinks he’s getting a little better, every day, he hears new words and slang that sets him back two steps for every one he takes forward.

 

_but then I think about how it’s even more difficult for you all the way in Australia so far away from your family and your friends and i think, i have to be strong like Rin-chan_

 

Rin tries out his new vocabulary. _fuck, nagisa_ , he thinks, and then immediately wishes he could take it back because no matter how much he wants to flip off the world, he just can’t, he can’t with Nagisa.

And it’s so damn painful like a kick to his balls because Nagisa never stopped believing in him. Even though he’s not strong or clever or anything like what Nagisa seems to think he is. He wishes there were some way he could reach out through the oceans and tell Nagisa _you stupid grasshopper, you are so much bolder and stronger than I could ever hope to be_.

He thinks of all the times he tried to fix Nagisa’s butterfly, and how Nagisa drank it all up eagerly, how he worked and worked and never gave up, how his arms stretch out when he reaches the end of a swim, like he’s just so excited he can’t wait to touch that bright light that’s waiting for him…

Nagisa would never let himself wallow like this.

_what would nagisa do?_

Rin takes a deep breath, and gets off the train at his stop, squaring his shoulders and pretending with all his heart that he’s a small blond hurricane ready to destroy every obstacle in his path by the sheer force of his optimism.

It’s such a dumb image that it makes him smile, for the first time today.

 

 

**III. flame**

 

When Nagisa dreams, he is always running.

His parents constantly chide him for fidgeting in his seat at dinner, fidgeting in his seat in the car, where there’s no space at all because they have to squash four children into the backseat when they all go out as a family. Nagisa used to sit on his oldest sister’s lap, but he’s getting too big for that now.

He’s like a coiled spring in his waking life, one of those rainbow Slinky toys, vibrating with nowhere to go, so in his dreams, he runs.

And he is always running alone, by the beach in Iwatobi.

Everything he can't let out during the day comes undone at night. He runs, and he runs, past low-roofed houses and fishermen with their nets full of squid and colourful boats docked at the pier, and the setting sun just beyond the horizon. 

Nagisa runs towards that sun with all his might, because he knows that he has to get there before it disappears. 

_what would rin-chan do_

He feels the fire surge through him, and then he sees the nostalgic shimmer of Rin running in front of them all, red hair flying in the wind, laughter fading into the distance.

Rin doesn't look back, because he is aiming for the world and there is no time to wait for little kids who can't catch up. 

Nagisa can't even catch the sun. 

He always wakes up as the last of its rays is sinking out of reach, below the cold surface of the water. 

 

* * *

 

When Rin dreams, it’s always in faded colours.

Rin is one of those dreamers who always _knows_ he’s in a dream. But he's never been able to snap himself awake, even so; he remains trapped, knowing this isn't life and this isn't real, letting himself be haunted nonetheless, by ghostly voices and washed out images that lie, buried, somewhere deep within his heart. 

Rin dreams of Haru, saying to him, like he used to say to Nagisa, _i'm going to leave you behind_ before he plunges into the pool and flies on ahead, turning into a dolphin halfway down the lane. Makoto is in the bleachers, cheering Haru on, and he turns to give Rin that look that's eternal and always, that look that tries to reassure Rin he's all right even if he's a failure, and something inside Rin twists horribly. 

Sometimes Rin dreams of Sousuke, looking down at him from the first place spot at a medal ceremony and holding out the disc of gold to him. _Rin, remember when you promised me anything I wanted? I wanted you to be standing next to me, I wanted you to be the one winning this, so why can't you... Rin, you've let me down, you've broken your promise_

And Rin shatters into a million pieces.

He explodes like a supernova, the heat and blinding ambition of his childhood dreams finally, finally, escalating to an unbearable white-hot peak that he can't bear any more. His small body can't take it any more. He was never meant to burn so brightly.  

Always, the hand that picks up the pieces of him just as Rin stirs into a fretful wakefulness is pale and fragile, always, he catches a glimpse of sunny gold that's the only thing in his dreams with all its colour untouched. 

 _rin-chan_ , he hears, calling him softly and tenderly, the only person who's ever called him that without mockery, the only person who believes in the grown-up strength of his crazy dreams while letting him still be a child inside, enough of a child to be called

_-chan, rin-chan_

Rin's eyes fly open.

 

 

 

**IV. blaze of glory**

 

Red and gold are the colours that burst forth from the pyre of us.

They mingle, twining round each other in a soaring, spinning dance; they flicker into the dark and then reach for the sky, tongues of flame, burning, burning, crimson and yellow in a fevered, clinging embrace, burning, till everything is ashes.

They say that sometimes, when the dust on the wind lands on you, you can still feel the heat pricking your skin.

 

 

**V. fade to black**

 

You wonder what became of that honey-blond child, sometimes, the one who breached everyone’s defenses like the paper-thin walls they really were, so fragile and frayed and ready for a summer breeze to come and blow them all away.

You wonder what became of him in the wintry tundra he’d stumbled into. You hang on, long after the letters stop coming, trusting that one day he’d finally melt all of that snow with his constant warmth of his, because if he couldn’t, if the cold could bury even that heart with a layer of frost, then you don’t know what hope’s left in this world.

 

* * *

 

Your heart skips a beat when you look up at the sakura blossoms, and you remember that day you buried a box amongst the flowers.

Inside that box lies a miracle, and it is still a miracle today because there’s nothing much that makes your heart sing these days, but when you think of that dazzling sight you saw, that moment when you touched the wall and shouted _rin-chan!_ and looked up to see that blazing comet soar above you, you smile.

You wonder what became of that boy who had a grin that lit up the sky. You don’t know what to say to him about your own life anymore, and the letters get harder and harder to write and you have a drawer full of scribbled drafts that you fold into paper boats, and one day you bring them all down to the beach and set them afloat onto the ocean.

You wonder what became of the spark that set you aflame, and you smile because you know that somewhere out there on the other side of the world, he is still shining bright.

 

* * *

 

And you pray with a heartfelt desperation that he will never find out how much you tried to be like him, and failed.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So the Day 5 prompt I'm supposed to be doing is "Personality/Character Swap", and I applied the loosest possible interpretation, because I am totally incapable of rolling straight with any prompt at face value, I'm so sorry. I'm also sorry I produced this... travesty. (I am, however, very happy to have finally experimented with second person POV, that was fun)
> 
> Man I love NagiRin, they are both wonderful to write. Thank you [Free! Rarepairs Week](http://freerarepairs.tumblr.com/) for providing the perfect opportunity! Go check out all the other great works that have been posted for underappreciated ships :)


End file.
